The horaltic pose
By Tom Poland: A Southern Writer
TomPoland.net
Back roads never disappoint me. Such was the case with a road, paved just a tad, but deliciously dirt the rest of the way. As I suspected, its name, Sardis, comes from the Bible, though it could be a family name. On a September Carolina Sunday I drove its length. It did not disappoint me.
My journey began with a search for Camp Barstow Boy Scout Camp. After missing a sign and turning around three times I found it. A busy place with parents picking up scouts. I made a mental note to come back. My chief memory? The towering power line running through its parking area and the huge nests osprey and eagles had built atop towers. A sight like that fills me with mixed emotions. The raptors make do, that is they adapt to the loss of habitat, yet what ugly, menacing eyries towers make.
Making my way to Mt. Willing Road I found myself in places where vintage petunias grow and the Rose of Sharon blooms. A house 175 years old, with wooden pegs, some call them treenails, holding parts of it together … a curious outbuilding, an old produce stand, perhaps, that proudly displayed its owner’s patriotism.
Staying on Mt. Willing I crossed Highway 378 and turned left on Sardis Road. In short order I passed Sardis Church on the right. There’s a Church of Sardis in Revelation, a book my grandmother said was the Bible’s most terrifying.
Sardis Road did not terrify me. It pleased me. My rearview mirror filmed my powdery contrail dusting leaves along the road’s shoulder. The road ahead hosted crows —everywhere — a crow convention was underway. No traffic to disturb them save me. In my rearview mirror I saw them congregate in my clouds of dust, cursing me perhaps with their crackling raucous caws.
High shoulders bordered the road, a giveaway that Sardis Road is a road of the old days. And if that didn’t convince me of its age, a magnificent school, I hear tell, did. It seemed European in style and the buzzard atop a chimney agreed, spreading its wings wide in affirmation, the legendary horaltic pose.
To photograph the buzzard, I positioned my tripod near a cedar post. I placed my hand atop the post to steady myself and lo and behold, I found a pocketknife some luckless worker had placed there and forgotten. Yep, losers weepers, finders keepers. I imagine you haven’t heard that in a long while.
Down the road a piece I came across what I call the hay bale house. An old two-story southern home with a new tin roof (thank you owners) stared at big round bales that stared back. I would have preferred the old square bales (they’re rectangular, you know) because that would have been more authentic to older times.
The best thing about this back road? It revived memories of childhood family reunions, smokehouses, old farms, and sugarcane. To this day I see some relative from the past, a great uncle I believe, cutting stalks of sugarcane and slicing them up for the kids. We sucked on them mightily. Don’t you know they grew right beside a dirt road. God bless dirt roads.
When Sardis Road ran out so did the past. In short order I found myself in the present day amid traffic, vinyl siding, and all manner of development. I drove on with wooden pegs, vintage petunias, the Rose of Sharon, an old school, haybales, and buzzards and crows and the US flag flying through my mind. I had left the glorious past and gone back to the asylum. I promise you, though, I will escape and find yet another dirt road to the almighty salvation of the past.
